Climate Change Could Melt Wolverines' Snowy 'Refrigerators'

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Wolverines, bearlike members of the weasel family, seem to depend
on spring snow cover, but it's not clear why.

Now, an international group of researchers has a new theory:
Wolverines
use snow like a refrigerator to preserve food during the lean,
cold times after their young are born, they suggest.

The animals live in the northern parts of North America, Asia and
Europe where resources can be scarce. Their vulnerability to
warming landed them as a "candidate for protection" in 2010 under
the
U.S. Endangered Species Act. As such, ever year the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service will review the wolverines' status and work
with others to implement voluntary measures.

After reviewing previous work on wolverine reproduction and food
availability, the research team concluded that the wolverines
live only within a "refrigeration zone," where spring snow and
cold allow them to store the food they scavenge or kill. This
strategy keeps insects, bacteria and other scavengers from
consuming it.

"Understanding why and how wolverines exist where they do and the
various adaptations they have evolved to eke out a living will
better inform population management strategies and conservation
of the species," lead researcher Robert Inman of the Wildlife
Conservation Society's North America Program said in a statement.

Better understanding how wolverines use the snow is crucial to
understanding how climate change change will affect the animals,
according to Inman and colleagues.

Both captive and wild wolverines have been observed hiding food,
such as meat taken from
reindeer carcasses, creating caches of food for lean times.
These caches are important for the survival of young wolverines,
since these animals give birth in a narrow window of time,
unusually early in the year for carnivores that do not hibernate,
Inman and colleagues write. [ World's
Cutest Baby Wild Animals ]

Caches allow the females easy access to stored food during the
late winter and early spring as they lactate. Without cached
food, the young die early in their lives, they write.

The results are detailed in the June issue of the Journal of
Mammology.